Queen Anne's Lace

by Susan Wittig Albert

  Roy, Tom’s partner, was waiting outside the conference room when the deputies were finished grilling me, and he filled me in on what they had found at the pot farm.

  “Pretty impressive operation,” he said. “A half acre at least, of high-yield plants. This isn’t something Gibbons was doing on his own. We’ve got the place staked out, so we can pick up the others who were helping him tend the crop as they show up. And in the house, we found a laptop and some emails that may take us to the distribution network Gibbons was plugged into. So you and Tom didn’t just find the farm. You opened a path for hitting the hub. The sheriff is calling in the Rangers and the feds to move the investigation forward. He needs to get a lid on it fast, before word gets out about this morning’s bust. The media will be on this like ducks on a June bug.”

  I didn’t doubt that. “Have you seen Tom?” I asked urgently. “Is he going to be okay?”

  Ray nodded toward the nurses’ station. “Yeah. He’s tough. That red-haired nurse will tell you where he is. His wife’s with him, but I’m sure he’ll want to see you.”

  Sylvia was sitting beside Tom’s bed when I went into the room. She launched herself out of her chair and wrapped her arms around me in a fervent embrace.

  “I can’t imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been there, China,” she said. “That man could have killed Tom.”

  “Nah,” I said. “Not a chance.”

  “Believe it.” Tom’s voice was slurred—painkillers, I thought—and I had to lean close to make out the words. “Gibbons knocked me down and my gun flew out of my hand, out of reach. He would have finished me off if you hadn’t taken him out.”

  “If you say so. I give up.” I held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “I never argue with a cop. Even one who is flat on his back.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AND then there was Jessica. She was waiting for me in the hall when I left Tom’s room.

  “Holy cow,” she said, eyeing my bandage and my T-shirt, soaked with blood and plastered to me. “What the hell happened to you?”

  “Old war wound,” I said. “Say, could you give me a ride back to the fairgrounds? I need to pick up my car. And check in on some chickens.”

  “I’ll give you a ride if you’ll give me the story,” Jessica said.

  “I don’t know what Sheriff Chambers is ready to release,” I said, frowning. “I understand he wants to keep a lid on this.”

  “I’ve already talked to the sheriff,” she said. “He’s laid down the law about what goes into print until their investigation is further along. But he’s cleared your part of the story, as long as I don’t get into who and where, and Hark wants it for the next edition. So what’s this business about Caitie’s rooster getting kidnapped?”

  I grunted. “Word gets around fast.”

  Jessica shook her head. “Superior investigative reporting. Dug it out all by myself, clue by clue. And I heard that you shot a guy to keep him from killing a cop. True?”

  “You don’t need my story,” I said. “You’ve already got it.”

  “Yeah, the outline. Now I need the gory details.” She took my arm. “Come on. I’ll drive you to the fairgrounds while you fill in the gaps.”

  * * *

  • • •

  ONE of the deputies had returned the roosters to their cages in the poultry tent, so they were safe—but a sorry sight. Extra Crispy had sustained a nasty cut to his comb and was missing a patch of breast feathers the size of a half-dollar. Blackheart’s tail looked as if it had been chewed on by a raccoon and one foot was bloody. Both were dusty and smeared with poopee. And the judges were just entering the tent to begin their rounds.

  “Poor things,” Jessica murmured, snapping their pictures. “They look like they’ve been through the wars.”

  “Give me your pen and a page of your notebook,” I said. I wrote down a two-sentence summary of the morning’s extracurricular activities and clipped it to Extra Crispy’s cage. I wanted the judges to know why the two roosters were not in the tip-top form they’d been in when they were entered. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “I can’t go to the shop in this bloody T-shirt. I’ve got to go home and shower and change into clean clothes.”

  “Not just yet,” Jessica said. “Stand right there, beside those roosters. I want to get a photo of you.”

  “Hey, no!” I protested. I put my hand up to the bandage over my ear, where my hair was caked with blood. “I’m a complete mess.”

  “Of course you’re a mess,” Jessica said gleefully. “That’s what makes this such a terrific story. Say Extra Crispy.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “YOU are a mess, China.” Ruby patted my arm sympathetically. “With that gauze wrapped around your head, you look like a mummy. Sort of.”

  “If you think this is bad, you should have seen me before I showered and changed. And put on fresh gauze.” I smothered a giddy giggle. “The bad guy looks a heckuva lot worse, though. And Tom Banner isn’t all that great, either. Not to mention the roosters. It was a rough morning for all concerned.”

  “Tell me,” Ruby commanded. “From the beginning.”

  It was nearly two o’clock. The lunch crowd was gone, and Ruby and I were having a very late lunch in the tearoom—grilled cheese sandwiches, a couple of dill spears, a scoop of chicken salad, and iced hibiscus tea—while Cass finished up in the kitchen and Jenna tended to the shops. It had been a long and strenuous morning, and breakfast was ancient history. I was hungry.

  I had told the story several times already, so it went pretty fast, even pausing for one or two applause lines. “If I hadn’t shot Gibbons,” I concluded, “he might have killed Tom. And once he’d done that, he had every reason to kill me, too.” I could still hear the crack! of the bullet that had shattered Tom’s windshield and feel the sharp splinters of flying glass. “I’ve never been crazy about guns. But McQuaid thinks I should know how to handle a shotgun, so I owe him for making me practice.”

  “Did you . . .” Ruby swallowed. “Did you mean to kill him?”

  She had asked one of the most important questions a defense attorney would ask a client he had allowed to take the stand. “I meant to put him out of operation,” I said. “If I had meant to kill him, I would have aimed higher.” Which suggested, of course, that I had controlled my aim. Which was not necessarily the case. I’d been pretty nervous when I fired that gun.

  Ruby picked up her iced tea. “And all this happened because of a couple of roosters,” she said wonderingly.

  “Not really.” I put down my fork and pushed my plate away. “Tom and I were there because of the theft of the chickens, of course—which turned out to be a good thing.”

  “Really? A good thing?”

  “Well, sure. I hate to say this, because I know how upset Caitie will be when she hears what happened to Extra Crispy. Both he and the black rooster are out of the running for a blue ribbon now, I’m afraid.” I picked up the pitcher and poured myself another glass of icy hibiscus tea. “But if Gibbons hadn’t stolen those roosters, Tom and I would never have followed the trail out to his place. He could still be contentedly tending his half acre of weed.”

  Ruby pursed her lips. “That sounds like a lot of marijuana. How much is it worth?”

  “It’s a sizable crop. I’ve read that an outdoor grower can put some five thousand plants on a half acre, with an average yield of a pound of saleable pot from each plant. If it’s selling for two hundred and eighty dollars an ounce, that’s a street value of twenty-two million dollars. The grower doesn’t get all of that, of course. He’s working for somebody. And there’s a markup along the distribution chain.”

  “But still,” Ruby said. “That’s a bushel of money.”

  “And that’s just one season,” I said. “Next spring, he could start all over again.”
In fact, he probably would have, reasoning that if his little farm hadn’t been discovered this year, it would be safe next year, too. And he already had the space and the equipment—that tractor, for instance.

  “But you put him out of business.”

  “His farming days are over.” I said it with special relish and leaned back in my chair. “The state of Texas has zero patience with guys who try to kill cops.”

  Ruby was shaking her head. “I still don’t understand why he stole the chickens. Isn’t that a little out of character for somebody who’s into drugs?”

  “He might not have been personally into drugs, Ruby. He obviously had homestead interests on the side. It’s my guess that he stole the black rooster so he could produce and sell those rare Ayam Cemani chickens—which are going for exorbitant prices. He raises Angora rabbits, as well. He had several hutches in the barn, and it turns out that he entered two French Angoras at the fair. One of them got a blue ribbon.” That information had come to me from Jessica, who thought it was a nicely ironic touch for her rooster-napping story, which would run in the next day’s paper (minus the name and address of the offender, of course). “I think he’s a homesteader who was looking for a quick cash crop. An easy way to make money.”

  “Well, it’s good that you got the chickens back,” Ruby said.

  “Yeah. They’re back in the poultry tent. I left a note on the cages to explain what happened, but that won’t make any difference to the judges.” I chuckled wryly. “I don’t think they have a prize category for roosters that were taken hostage.”

  “Caitie will be disappointed,” Ruby said. “But not as much as she’d be if Extra Crispy had been . . . well, fried.”

  “Please.” I shuddered. “Let’s not go there.”

  “Does she know what happened?”

  “Not yet. She’s at play rehearsal today. I’m picking her up after work and we’ll drive out to the fairgrounds then.” I changed the subject. “Anything interesting happen here?”

  “Mostly just the usual.” Ruby frowned. “But that doorbell of yours has been a problem ever since we opened this morning. I’ve gone to your shop several times when I thought you had a customer, but nobody was there.” She folded her forearms on the table, looking perturbed. “China, I don’t like to harp on this subject because I know you don’t believe in ghosts. But I think you really ought to consider the possibility that—”

  “I’ve already considered it.”

  “You have?” Ruby was taken aback. “You mean, you might agree that what we have here is a ghost?”

  Instead of answering, I looked around. Our tearoom is a lovely, inviting place. We’ve installed hunter-green wainscoting partway up the old square-cut limestone walls, painted our tables and chairs green, and set the tables with floral chintz napkins (yes, real cloth!) and small crystal vases of fresh flowers and herbs. Baskets of ferns hang in narrow, deep-set windows that look out onto the gardens. But for just a second, I was in an entirely different place. And time.

  “This used to be a bedroom,” I said.

  “Really?” Ruby tilted her head. “Well, I know that you had an apartment here, but I remember this as your living room.”

  “It was. But back in the day, way back, this was a bedroom. The bed was over there.” I pointed. “It had an elaborate spindled headboard and footboard and a white crocheted spread with a white skirt, and ruffled white pillow shams. All very Victorian. There was a dressing table over there, with one of those three-paneled mirrors, and a commode there.” I pointed toward the corner where we park our serving trolley, which was already stocked with cutlery, pitchers, and stacks of plates for tomorrow’s lunch.

  “A commode? Oh, right. No bathroom back then, I guess.” Ruby frowned. “Hey, wait a minute. How do you know all this stuff?”

  “There were some photos in that carton we found in the storeroom upstairs. Shots of the garden, plus several of the interior. This room was a bedroom. Your shop was the dining room, with a long table and six chairs. My shop was the parlor, where the neighborhood ladies got together to do fancy needlework and listen to Mrs. Duncan read to them—sort of like a sewing circle, I guess.”

  Back in the shop, the bell began to ring fast and hard, as if it were disagreeing with me. Jenna came to the door and said helplessly, “Sorry. It’s just doing that. All by itself. I don’t know how to make it stop.”

  “We know, dear,” Ruby said. “Thank you.”

  “If that’s our ghost,” I said crossly, “I wish she’d find another way to communicate.” And then I had another thought.

  “Excuse me,” I said. I got up, stepped into the shop, and looked at the bulletin board. FALL CLASSES had been pushed up to the top of the board, and a whole new arrangement was in place: HELLO .

  Tucked behind the smiley-face magnet was a sprig of fresh lavender.

  I went back to the tearoom and sat down at the table again. “She did,” I said flatly.

  Ruby raised both eyebrows. “Who did? What did she do?”

  “The ghost,” I said. “She has found another way to communicate. She’s left me a message on the bulletin board.”

  Ruby got up, went to look at the bulletin board, and sat back down. “I noticed that this morning. I thought you put it there. It’s cute. The smiley face, I mean. Cheery.”

  “Oh, it’s cheery all right,” I said. “But I didn’t do it.”

  And then I told her the whole thing, start to finish. The humming I’d heard in the storeroom, the photos and lavender and letters rearranged on the bulletin board, Ethel’s sighting of the woman in a long skirt in the garden. And of course the bell over the door, which Ruby already knew about. I left out the scary dreams, feeling that they were probably a product of my overanxious imagination. In fact, it seemed easy now to think of all this as the work of a ghost. But even without the dreams, there was plenty to tell, and the story took a while.

  “Well, good,” Ruby said with satisfaction, when I had finished. “I guess we do have us a ghost, huh?”

  My lawyerly self leapt to her feet. Facts not in evidence, Your Honor! But she knew when she was defeated. She sat down and put her head in her hands.

  “I suppose we do,” I said, feeling a deep sympathy for the lawyerly part of me. It’s hard to give up treasured assumptions. “The question I’ve been trying to answer is why? Why now? And why me?” I pointed at Ruby. “You’re usually the one who attracts ghosties and conjures up supernatural doings. But these messages seem to be directed at me.”

  “Maybe because this is your building?” Ruby asked reasonably. “You’re the owner.”

  “I suppose,” I said with a shrug. “Makes sense, since our ghost must be Mrs. Duncan, the first owner.”

  In the shop, the bell gave a series of irritated peals.

  I crossed my arms on the table and raised my voice. “Well, then, if you’re not Mrs. Duncan, just who the devil are you? The Historical Society says this is the Duncan family house.”

  Ruby and I stared at each other while the bell fired off another loud volley of exasperated dings.

  “Sounds like she’s expecting you to figure out what her name is,” Ruby said. “Would the Historical Society have any clues?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I can take another look in that carton of photographs. There are some newspaper clippings.”

  Ruby cocked her head, listening, but the bell was silent. “She has no objection to that, I guess.” She gave me a small smile and pushed back her chair. “I have to go. I’m teaching a meditation class this afternoon.”

  I began picking up our dishes. “Tell Jenna I’ll be back in a few minutes. I have to check things out at the cottage. We have a new guest arriving tomorrow.”

  “Oh, really? Who is she?” Ruby always makes a point of stopping to say hello to our bed-and-breakfast guests.

  “I don’t know m
uch about her,” I said over my shoulder, on my way to the kitchen. “She filled in the rental form online. She’s from out of state.”

  As I rinsed the dishes and headed out to the cottage, I thought about the photos I had studied the night before. One of the out-of-doors shots had shown two little girls—twins, I thought—standing beside the stable on a long-ago summer day of sunshine and sunflowers, feeding a carrot to a fat pony. Were the girls my ghost’s daughters? And if she wasn’t Mrs. Duncan, who was she? I was itching to know. Maybe the answer was in those newspaper clippings. I would go through the carton tonight.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE stone stable is long gone, of course. In the years after World War I, most people gave up horses in favor of automobiles, and it was turned into a large garage. Later, when the architect bought and remodeled my building, he reincarnated the stable-cum-garage as a lovely one-bedroom guesthouse with a fireplace in the living room, a small built-in kitchen, and a hot tub on its own private deck. I list it as a rental in the Pecan Springs Bed-and-Breakfast Guide and on the Internet. It comes with linens, towels, and a ready-to-eat breakfast that Cass assembles each afternoon and stashes in the cottage refrigerator, so our guest can pop it in the microwave while she’s brewing her morning coffee.

  There’s extra work connected with the cottage, of course—a bit of light housekeeping, laundry, bed-making, and so on. But it’s proving to be a welcome source of income, so I don’t mind the chores. I had already cleaned and straightened after the last guest, but I wanted to go through my checklist and make sure that everything was in order for the next guest.

  I was in the bedroom, polishing a few fingerprints from a glass pane in one of the double French doors, when I heard Lori’s light voice.

  “China? Are you here, China?”

  “In the bedroom,” I called. “Come on back.”

  A moment later, Lori was standing in the doorway. She was wearing blue pedal pushers and a white T-shirt with the words Keep Calm and Carry YARN in bright red letters. Her brown hair was loose around her shoulders, giving her a little-girl look.